


300,000

by v3ilfire



Series: like no lion that you've heard before [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Gen, it's mostly just 'shepard gets sad in solitary confinement', this is only light shenko tbqh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 01:56:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8426158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/v3ilfire/pseuds/v3ilfire
Summary: “Admiral! Don’t you dare walk away, Admiral!” More hands tugged on her arm, chipped at her balance, tore at her throat, but, “Three hundred thousand Batarian lives, Admiral! Three hundred thousand!” He was opening the door. He was walking away from her. Hundreds of eyes and hundreds of lenses all on her, but he was walking away and there was a swarm of hands on her trying to take her and, surprise, biotic restraints did so very little against desperation.Then again, what was one desperate woman?





	1. spaced, again

**Author's Note:**

> [look, it's on tumblr!](http://v3ilfire.tumblr.com/post/152532352697/300000)

Florence, frankly, hated the Cerberus uniform, but she’d sure as hell prefer it to civilian clothes. She never figured Hackett a man for metaphor, but evidently the Admiral didn’t _literally_ mean she’d be answering the call with her dress blues on. The courtesies extended to her on the eve of her hasty trial stopped and ended at a black pantsuit and a cold cup of coffee practically thrown at her by some shaking intern. She would choose to forget about being cuffed and escorted at gunpoint despite emerging from her ship unarmed and with her hands up in the air.

In retrospect, the dress blues misunderstanding should have been an omen because Hackett, despite his assurances on the SR-2, did little but _mention_ Florence’s past as a war hero in the wake of what happened on Aratoht. She tried not to listen to any of it - the testimonies, the outrage of Batarian officials, the quiet hum of camera drones, Hackett’s too-cool disappointment, the pandering, the _stalling_ . She forced clipped replies past her clenched jaw only when necessary, only ever agreeing, only ever admitting guilt. _Yes_ , she killed the colonists; _yes_ , she did so outside of Alliance orders; _yes, yes, yes._ She assured herself it’d be worth it until the gavel dropped, and the words _house arrest_ slammed her in the chest and she suddenly remembered what it felt like to be spaced.  
“Admiral Hackett,” she choked out, “I answered the call, I plead _guilty_ , but please, sir, the Reapers are _coming_.”   
“It is no longer your concern, Shepard,” he said. “Court adjourned.”  
“Court adj -- court _adjourned?_ ” The words tasted of bile coming up and all eyes were on her, but -- but _good_ , god damn it, _good._ “Sir, we’ve ignored the threat before and -”   
“I said _adjourned_ , Shepard.” There were hands on her elbows, tugging her towards the door, but Florence stood her ground.   
“Admiral Hackett!” she spat, the consonants harsh on a voice unaccustomed to a volume above ‘library.’ The woman on her right tugged a little harder but Florence yanked her arm away. “God damn it Admiral, the _Reapers_ are _coming!_ ”

Hackett shook his head at her. Shook his _damn_ head like she was some child throwing a tantrum and the cadet on her left made the mistake of putting their hand on her shoulder and Hackett was walking away and, “Admiral! Don’t you _dare_ walk away, Admiral!” More hands tugged on her arm, chipped at her balance, tore at her throat, but, “ _Three hundred thousand_ Batarian lives, Admiral! Three _hundred thousand!_ ” He was opening the door. He was walking away from her. Hundreds of eyes and hundreds of lenses all on her, but he was walking away and there was a swarm of hands on her trying to take her and, _surprise_ , biotic restraints did so very little against desperation.

Then again, what was one desperate woman?


	2. don't you have a job to do?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they're trying, you know?

_ “Admiral Hackett! God damn it Admiral, the Reapers are coming! The Reapers are --” _

“Yeah, that wasn’t a good look for you.” Florence shut the datapad down and tossed it aside. James Vega was a sweet enough kid but she  _ really _ had to talk to him about walking in unannounced; not that she was in any position to give orders. “How many more times you gonna watch that, Commander?”   
“Shepard,” Florence corrected. She was afraid that if she turned towards the Lieutenant he’d try to salute her again, so she reached for the tube of medi-gel on her coffee table instead and idly massaged it into her blistered wrists. 

To his merit, James was used to Florence’s uncanny pensive quiet. He moved to her kitchenette without further prompting and began to unload the groceries the Alliance provided her with. She supposed the one  _ nice _ thing about being under house arrest was Earth-grown produce and never having to worry about accidentally eating dextro food, but the thought brought overwhelming longing where relief should probably have been. 

Florence snapped out of her trance at Vega’s low whistle. She turned to find him staring at the inside of her refrigerator.    
“Damn. Going a little  _ loco _ in here, Shep?” he said, picking up one of the many neatly pre-composed meals she’d stacked in there. She resisted mentioning that the tupperware lids were color-coded by intended time of day, no matter how proud she was of her system.   
“Problem, Lieutenant?”  
“No m’am,” he laughed. “I’ve seen what you do to people who have problems with you.” 

Garrus would like him, she thought.    
  


* * *

 

More than anything, Florence missed being too busy to check her own mail. Nowadays she had far too much time to stare at her empty inbox, hoping for  _ anything _ , wishing that she could be surprised that the Alliance cut her neatly away from her friends just as readily as they shut her away from the war efforts. She didn’t know where Garrus was or if he was getting himself into trouble again, she didn’t know if Thane was still alive, if Grunt was fitting in with the Krogan and if Wrex was taking good care of him, if Jack was doing better or if Miranda was still keeping her sister safe. She didn’t know and she couldn’t help.

The datapad landed softly on the couch cushion next to her as Florence slumped backwards, head craned up towards the ceiling. She’d almost rather be dead than quite so helpless, and that was speaking from experience.

 

* * *

 

The knock at her door didn’t distract Florence from her measured slicing of cucumbers. It was just a courtesy anyway, considering she couldn’t open the damn thing by herself, so she paid it little mind. So little, in fact, it took Anderson clearing his throat to get the woman’s attention.  Her knife clattered onto the cutting board while she scrambled to salute the Admiral who stood smiling at her past the bags under his eyes. 

“No need, Shepard.” 

He deliberately did not approach her, just as he deliberately did not bring up any of the Normandy crew. Florence didn’t dare ask with the amount of microphones she knew for a fact were stashed around the apartment, along with those she’d not yet found. There was a moment when she thought of blinking morse code at the Admiral like they did in the old vids sometimes, but there were also the cameras tucked in every nook and cranny. For both their sakes, she merely stood and stared vacantly out the window as Anderson told her of the war efforts - the same information the Alliance was feeding to the public, of course, which was both minimal and nauseatingly sugar coated.  
“I didn’t come here to talk shop, Shepard,” he said suddenly, in the lull of a stunted conversation about new stealth measures on Alliance drive cores (still dwarfed by the Normandy, of course). “I want to know how you’re doing in here.” For the first time in her life, Florence had to stop herself from being angry at the Admiral. A million answers bubbled up from her stomach and crowded her throat, so dense that the bare, “fine,” that she choked out arrived just late enough for him to know that it was a lie. 

But, he too was well-aware of the camera peeking out from between the petals of a synthetic flower they’d placed in a vase on the table, so he tried not to let his eyes linger on her scarred hands for too long and stood to say goodbye.

 

* * *

 

Florence weighed in at a modest 140lbs, or as Chakwas once put it, ‘terrifyingly dense for 5-foot-4.’ Normally she did not give this any thought, but it was hard not to feel annoyed at her meager stature when it was the only thing she could lift to keep herself from getting too soft.

Hours of pointless push-ups and sit-ups and planks and tricep dips and lunges, days of trying to make up for lost time out in the field. She’d have stopped after the first day if not for the relief of counting. Neither the skies nor her inbox showed any indication of progress on the war front, and the news that she  _ did _ get from Vega during his visits was more filtered than a Quarian suit. At the very least, he had the courtesy to double-check her reps while he was in.

 

* * *

 

The closest microphone to the bathroom was stuck behind a lightswitch seven feet to the left of the door. The chances of it picking up anything other than the arbitrary humming of the lights and perhaps the muffled running of water were low, but when Florence curled up on the shower floor, she bit down on her arm anyway to muffle the sobs.

 

* * *

“Did you really break a Krogan out of a breeding tank?”   
“Wasn’t he in the news vids?”   
“Do you really think I watch news vids?”   
“Why don’t you watch them?”   
“Wouldn’t you rather be the news?” Florence chuckled, but evidently took too long to respond because James decided it was a good idea to chuck a banana at her. She stopped it with her biotics just before it hit her face and set it down a few inches beyond her half-eaten salad. “Supposed to answer with a question, Commander.”    
“Don’t you have a job to do, Vega?”   
“Don’t you?”

 

* * *

 

The best thing for her biotics, Florence found, was just to concentrate on levitating as close to the couch as she possibly could. The cameras never caught her and while she was  _ sure _ her biotic strength was slipping, at the very least she could work on her endurance, quiet her brain for the duration of the exercise. 

Unfortunately, she lost count around minute twelve and when the silence filled her ears she began to wonder. The buzz of biotics surfaced memories she had kept locked up for months, and she found herself lost to the hope that Kaidan had someone to care for his headaches.

 


	3. back to zero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> time's up, rise up, eyes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i can't write a good summary so i'm going to quote hamilton for this one

Six months in solitary confinement. Six months of watching the skies, of watching her inbox, watching her own damn hair grow long enough to hit her shoulders again. Six months of standing in the bathroom just as she was, hands gripping the sides of the sink and staring at her own sorry reflection.

Six months and she felt nothing. Not anymore. Florence Shepard could never hold a grudge.

It wasn’t that she gave up, no, she was still training and hoping and god, sometimes she considered praying, but how much longer would she last? She no longer had the aid of Cerberus, and if she decided to break out of her confinement she wouldn’t have the Alliance either. Nobody would rouse a rogue army to back a war criminal, and she needed all the galaxy could offer to take the Reapers down. The situation looked bleak at best, and with each day that crawled by more and more of the time that Aratocht bought the rest of them was wasted to nothing more than human negligence. It was little surprise that the rest of the intergalactic populace was taking its time to warm up to humanity.

James Vega’s sharp whistle interrupted Florence’s bi-weekly downward spiral. The disgraced Commander put on another brave face, not expecting it to be smacked with a folded shirt the moment that she opened the door.

She put her hands out in front of her just in time for her Alliance fatigues to fall into her grip.

“Anderson came through for you,” James said, grinning wide. “Don’t screw this up for us, Shepard. Hope they still fit.” Florence stared at the uniform in her hands, completely dumbfounded for a full three seconds before all the vigor of Commander Florence Shepard of the Alliance Systems Navy flooded her system again.   
“I make no promises, Lieutenant.”

He saluted her, and this time, she didn’t reprimand him for it.

All eyes were on her and Anderson on their way to meet the defense committee, Vega tailing directly behind. Pulling her out of house arrest couldn’t mean that they had _good_ news to deliver, but at least Florence was back in her own skin. Wearing the uniform was the only thing that felt right. To hell with Hackett and his flippancies, to hell with the brass. The Alliance was about people like her and Anderson and Vega and Kaidan and Ashley and Pressly and the people they protected, and the Alliance would join the fight if that meant that she had to drag every individual cadet to champion the cause alongside the Normandy herself.  
“So what does the defense committee want with me?” she asked. Anderson gave her one of his _hell if I know_ looks that was a common indicator that he was holding back some choice comments in regards to the bureaucrats.   
“All they told me is that something big is headed our way, and I think they’re finally scared enough to consider putting you back on the front lines.” Florence sighed.   
“We’ve lost a lot of time, Admiral.” She did not have to bring up Aratoht for him to pick up the implication.   
“I know.”

Anderson split off to go ahead as soon as they entered the committee vestibule, and Florence did her best to pretend she didn’t notice the way every officer in the room was looking at her.   
“You gonna be alright in there, Shepard?” James asked. She was glad that he seemed just as relaxed and unceremonious as he was with her in private. It put her at ease.   
“Yeah,” she said. “As long as Anderson’s in there with me, I should be fine.”   
“Just… don’t end the hearing by ending up at the bottom of an Alliance brass dogpile again.” Florence had a comeback at the tip of her tongue, but she did not get the chance to say anything because Kaidan called her name from the other end of the room, and her entire head immediately slammed the brakes. “I think you’re being summoned,” James added. She nodded, and thankfully Anderson only made her fumble through a quick greeting before he ushered them into the committee chamber.

Three minutes later, three hundred thousand Batarian lives were squandered in entirety.


End file.
